A film by Jochen Hick. Starts 29.6. at the fsk.

In West Berlin in the 1960s it was pos­si­ble to find bars whe­re men could be left to them­sel­ves – a fact that was to turn the city into a magnet for young gay men. The prot­ago­nists of this film, all still acti­ve mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty today, recall tho­se ear­ly years in the city. Theirs are memo­ries of a com­mu­ni­ty that fought ste­adi­ly for its exis­tence, and of its chan­ge, right up to the fall of the Wall. Faced with con­sidera­ble social repres­si­on in the 1970s, a coll­ec­ti­ve gay iden­ti­ty began to emer­ge, and the ‘West Berlin homo­se­xu­al cam­paign’ cal­led for the aboli­ti­on of para­graph 175 and the over­throw of patri­ar­chy. Ruined buil­dings beco­me the venues for new ways of living tog­e­ther such as all-male com­mu­nes or the ‘que­er house’. Cottaging, East-West affairs, lea­ther bars, drag per­for­man­ces in the sub­way – an anar­chic kind of joy out­shi­nes past suf­fe­ring. A deca­de later, AIDS was to hit Berlin. After Out in Ost-Berlin (Out In East Berlin) Jochen Hick explo­res que­er life­styl­es in the West of the city and the roots of a fasci­na­ti­on that the metro­po­lis still holds as a refu­ge – and not just for gay men. A fasci­na­ting jour­ney through time fea­turing pre­vious­ly unpu­blished archi­ve material.